Introduction

From the ideas of republican education, in the way it was established in the Enlightenment modernity of the 18th century, some meanings stand out that can certainly be considered valid and desirable even today: an education for all, which forms enlightened subjects, capable of deliberating, each one for himself, on the destinies of a society that concerns everyone. Everyone’s enlightenment would result from training based on the criteria of science and other forms of rational thought. The inclusive meaning of this ideology would come from the democratic spirit that lies at its base, in clear opposition to both the elitist education of the time and the aristocratic society based on privileges then in force (^{Maamari, 2009}).

The revolutionary character of this ideology was expressed in the idea of a sociability that concerned everyone and whose common destiny would be established based on the opinions of the subjects, based on the principle of each individual’s right to indicate their preferences. The enlightenment of everyone through a common education would guarantee, in turn, the qualification of individual opinions, which would result in the quality of the collective’s choice of destinies, that is, of political choices¹.

After more than two centuries, the impression given is that modern people made an overly optimistic bet on humans, assuming that they would be guided by an objectivity inherent to the principles of a form of rationality. The 20th century, with its totalitarianism, wars and genocides, was especially emblematic in indicating the difficulties in implementing the ideals of freedom, solidarity and a form of emancipated sociability based on the enlightenment of subjects (^{Garcia, 2009}). But it is at the beginning of the 21st century that Enlightenment ideas seem to be a chimera increasingly distant from human reality, sounding like a bet made for subjects other than those on our planet.

In current times, as we know, a characteristic stands out that has produced profound impacts in all spheres of human life, which is the development of increasingly faster ways of interaction through the flow and access to information on a global scale and in an instant. In this apparent democratization of information made possible by the omnipresence of digital media, a large part of opinions has been formed without any horizon of objectivity from which they could be compared, distinguished or evaluated. The absence of this horizon, in turn, undermines the conditions of what has been built, over the last few centuries, as a democratic state of law, especially due to the possibility of establishing monopolized controls and forms of manipulation of this information flow², with risks of a civilizational regression through the establishment of the tyranny of the majority or the strongest, much like the primitive hordes, but now with digital and more sophisticated techniques, but analogous to those of assault, usurpation and lynching. With the establishment of social communication and interaction networks, the so-called “bubbles” of the internet, fanaticism proliferates and critical subjectivities are erased, with clear effects of fraying the social fabric.

We have therefore faced a situation that replaces the themes of rationality and training as issues no longer restricted to the field of education, but as demands, certainly, of society as a whole, as these new dynamics impact the forms of organization and distribution of material and cultural goods, governments and the entire administrative apparatus, in addition to issues relating to human life and health itself, as can be seen throughout the coronavirus pandemic. And the paradox of our time is the fact that many people adopt a lifestyle that takes advantage of the latest advances in science, such as cell phones and the internet, at the same time that they move towards more properly medieval conceptions, in which they no longer They distinguish science from belief, medicine from witchcraft, chemistry from alchemy…

Our intention, in this writing, is to make an effort to understand how we got to where we are, especially through the incorporation of perspectives of thought whose effects are now becoming clear. Let’s follow the path of the schematization of reason, seeking to understand its stakes, especially from modernity onwards, and its practical effects, desirable or not. We will follow the critique of reason and evaluate the scope of the theories that propose its abandonment. And in an attempt to recover some of the utopian energies present in the ideas of modernity, we will follow the effort to reconstruct reason in a neomodern perspective.

As for the potential of republican educational ideology, we understand that it can be updated by confronting, on the one hand, the limits of the conception of rationality that guided it in the 18th century, especially with regard to its subjective and self-referential character and which exacerbated the its instrumental dimension, and, on the other, the reactive positions to the pathological effects of this narrowed reason, resulting in the denial of any and all forms of rationality, as can be seen in some of the perspectives that are assumed to be postmodern. Our theoretical path, therefore, will be based on a reflection on the ways of understanding rationality itself, whether in the paradigmatic form of subjective reason, which inspired the revolutionary movements of the 18th century, or in the paradigmatic form of an intersubjective or communicative reason, in the terms proposed by ^{Jürgen Habermas (2012a}; ^2012b), and which, in the bet we support here, allows us to replace the republican ideology of education on modified bases, especially with regard to the understanding of what could be a form of rationality that clarifies the individuals and qualifies them in their opinions³.

Through this investigative path, we will seek to sustain the potential of republican educational ideas to face the great challenges facing schools today and from the perspective of a possible contribution to the establishment of a sociability built and sustained by individuals whose opinions can be considered, if not clarified in the modern sense, as reasonable as possible.

Ranges and Limits of the Modern Conception of Rationality

The modern period was, without a doubt, a revolutionary period due to man’s new ways of understanding himself in the world, supported by an optimistic self-image regarding his power of creation and intervention in the world (^{Rouanet, 1987}, p. 26ss). The impact of the transformations caused there must be understood from the paradigmatic change in the scope of human thought that took place in this period of history. It is a change in understanding regarding its species differential, that is, its specifically human capacity to not only adjust to its surroundings, but to produce novelty in the midst of existing things and given situations (^{Marques, 1993}, p. 41-47).

It will be in relation to what was previously understood as an understanding of reason, for approximately two millennia, that one can evaluate the impact that the paradigmatic change brought about in modernity ended up having on society as a whole and, consequently, also on education. Going back to the origins of philosophy itself, we can identify a first way of understanding human rationality in the way it was established from the hegemonic current of Greek thought, represented by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. In the wake of these philosophers, the long and lasting ontological tradition was consolidated.

If we examine classical Philosophy, as well as medieval Philosophy, we see that, from Socrates to Saint Thomas Aquinas, the problem that prevails is that which concerns being as being, with Gnoseology inserted in metaphysical studies. The Philosophy of the Greeks, as well as the Philosophy of the Middle Ages, was, above all, an Ontology, using this term in its broad or traditional sense, that is, in the sense of a theory of being in general, or a general part of Metaphysics [ …]

(^{Reale, 2002}, p. 30).

The idea of a given world capable of being grasped in its essentiality proved to be fruitful as a reference parameter for knowledge given the contingent, temporary and always partial nature of everything that is presented to humans. The problem of knowledge that the ontological paradigm sought to resolve involved the difficulty of affirming something universal and true about the world in the face of evidence of a reality that is always in motion. Thus, these philosophers sought something essential, immutable, or static in the midst of a world that is constantly transforming, so that it would be possible to affirm some truth that imposed itself objectively (Prado Júnior, 1984; ^{Schaefer, 1985}, p 45-55). With this, the ontological paradigm is also the paradigm of essences, of objective truths already placed in the world, from which it can be deduced that rationality consists of a correct adaptation of thought or consciousness to the constitutive essentiality of everything that exists. In summary, for this paradigm the world has an essential dimension in all its manifestations and which remains unalterable even under the movement of change and transformation.

This essentialist paradigm derives from the notions, on the one hand, of knowledge as remembrance or an emergence of one’s own from an innate potentiality of the subject (innateness and apriorism, in the wake of Platonism) and, on the other, of discovery based on an organization mental data of reality collected by the senses (realism in the Aristotelian sense) (^{Becker, 1993}, p. 2-3; ^{Mizukami, 1986}, p. 2-3). In any case, the possibilities for human fulfillment and the scope of knowledge would be strictly restricted to what is already given, enabling, in turn, its blossoming or discovery. Hence the easy articulation of this paradigm with the religious perspective of a world created by God and the correct conduct of a life based on his revealed designs, as occurred in the patristic and scholastic periods, over more than a millennium (^{Aranha; Martins, 1993}, p. 143).

It is against this delimitation of the boundaries of what would be possible knowledge that modern reason rebels. Or, in historical terms, it was the difficulties of maintaining science and human aspirations within these limits of a given world that led to a new understanding of what could be taken as being human, that is, its rationality. There was then an inversion of what could be called the equation of knowledge: it would no longer be an adaptation of the subject and his intellect to a supposedly given world, but an inverse operation, that is, an adjustment from the world to the subject, from a configuration of that world based on its creative possibilities. If in the paradigm of essences, the world was already ordered and it was up to the subject to simply adapt to what was already established, here he is an active participant in the relationship of knowledge, in the sense that the objective world that can be known is the one that human reason is capable of producing. In other words, the objectivity of the world starts to be established by human reason itself, which is guided by its intrinsic logic, thus becoming the parameter and anchorage of the process of knowing (^{Bolzan, 2005}, p. 22-30).

This paradigmatic change, therefore, takes place in a context of greater appreciation of man and his inventive and creative capacity, as well as the belief in the supposedly unlimited powers of his rationality. An example of this bet on rationality are the first statements by ^{René Descartes (2016, p. 37)} in his The Discourse of Method: “Common sense is the best shared thing in the world”, and “[…] the capacity for good -judging, and distinguishing the true from the false, which is exactly what is called common sense or reason is naturally the same in all men”.

Descartes contributes to the discussion about method as well, a keyword for thinkers of this period, since belief is not just in reason, but in its power to indicate to man a safe path to building his happiness. It wasn’t enough to just be rational. It would be necessary to apply this capacity well. Thus, if reason, a characteristic that distinguishes human beings from other animals, is universal, that is, available to every individual, the only problem that remains for the human way of being, for leading their lives, is how to use this reason. So, what is the method, or the most reliable way of conducting reason?

Descartes, pursuing this intention, brings to the discussion around the method his confidence in mathematical models, anchored in pure a priori reason. Therefore, rational operation is equivalent to a prospective operation that allows projecting new situations and realities in the way thought is capable of conceiving them. With this, infinite possibilities are presented to man’s creative power, given that his rational way of thinking is understood as a kind of domain of the DNA of the world, in the form of a divine force that can do everything. It all begins, so to speak, on the drawing board of your thinking, since res cogitans (thinking thing) is what defines man. This is the scope of modern reason that finds in itself, that is, in the subjectivity of the individual, the criteria for validating its operation.

When considering the world subject to intervention, modern reason sets itself up as a project, with the willingness to redo everything. It is within the scope of the modernity project that bourgeois and liberal revolutions are carried out, proposing to reformulate society, politics, the economy and all knowledge, the basis of which would become subjective reason. Thus, we have an Enlightenment project, or the Enlightenment project, based on three major principles, namely: “[…] autonomy, the human purpose of our acts and, finally, universality” (^{Todorov, 2008}, p. 14). Due to the character of universality, the Lights “[…] produce a ‘disenchanted’ world obeying from end to end the same natural and secular laws” (^{Todorov, 2008}, p. 15).

And it is precisely education, whose function will be to bring the Lights to everyone, that becomes an indispensable condition for this new project. Hence the order to teach everything to everyone (Comenius). Through education, the condition of perfectibility would be activated, in the sense of the possibility of improving all humanity through rational knowledge, especially through science. Education would, in all cases, have the task of contributing to the optimization of these potentialities of reason. With this, science gains the function of enlightenment and the teacher is the one who has the mission of teaching them to new generations to prepare them for this new society that is being projected. Thus, there is an evident focus on public education as a place and opportunity for the development of science in new generations, through a republican project so that citizens, in addition to having rights, can enjoy them (^{Condorcet, 2008}).

However, this belief in the march of progress, a characteristic of modern thought, presents its excesses in relation to the conception of rationality, the political project and in relation to the function of education. Moderns did not realize that the supposed emancipatory critical reason was not always capable of achieving its objectives, due to a series of factors. An example of this modern belief, according to ^{Habermas (2012a, p. 278)}, is Condorcet himself, who “[…] abandons himself to an automatic effectiveness of the spirit; that is, he trusts that human intelligence is focused on the accumulation of knowledge and that it brings about advances in civilization through a diffusion of knowledge for itself”. In other words, the mistake would be in the belief that the simple possession of knowledge could have emancipatory effects.

Other reservations can be made about the excesses of the modern belief in the idea that education would produce a specific society. The dangerous thing about this logic of producing new generations through education, of preparing them for a world that has already been designed, or of directing them towards some previously established direction, lies in the fact that the generation that did so would probably steal younger people the opportunity to create, denying their instituting capacity (^{Arendt, 2016}). It would be regrettable and even unthinkable, from the point of view of the modern paradigm, to try to “form citizens” (^{Brayner, 2008}), like a machine or automaton that perfectly reproduces the republican and democratic functions that we desire, with the ultimate objective of reproducing the society that we want. The refusal of established projects, or their non-acceptance as such, is justified based on the innovation that we must guarantee as a right to new generations, as long as this occurs in the understanding of tradition, taking into account the democratic means for establishment of the new one.

As for the modern project as a whole, it is necessary to remember that many of those expected benefits ended up not being realized, and “[…] the promises made previously were not fulfilled” (^{Todorov, 2008}, p. 23). The science that became scientism⁴ was not enough to make the social and political field necessarily better, even though generations of educators have focused on this purpose. Rationalism and scientism, as blind bets of modernity, did not necessarily make human life better, but it is certain that they contributed to the exploitation and destruction of nature, as well as to the formation of totalitarianisms that had a devastating effect, especially throughout the 20th century.

The Crisis of Reason and the Post-Modernism

Reason, in the subjective form in which modernity conceived it, proved to be: a) extremely influenced by material issues inherent to capitalism; b) guided by psychic factors invisible to modern man, therefore, uncontrollable and unpredictable; c) guided by a weakness in the ability to think about the common world, falling several times into irrationalism and barbarism. For these and other reasons, the reason that claimed to be liberating proved to be at the service of specific interests, and, while it claimed to be constructive and progressive, it destroyed nature and brought catastrophe and misery to a large portion of men. Finally, from these and other possible points of view, an overwhelming criticism is outlined that puts the project of modernity as a whole into crisis and, with it, also, “[…] the foundations of reason, the very conditions of the possibility of knowledge” (^{Marques, 1996}, p. 33).

In this context of crisis of reason, post-modernism emerges as a movement of paradigmatic rupture that does not necessarily propose a way out, but that declares the modern project as a completed and failed attempt, and that, therefore, should be discarded as it finds itself Exhausted in its possibilities. The reason under which it was built should even be declared incapable of thinking about its own crisis because it is not truly critical. The postmodern vision, therefore, begins to understand modernity as a system closed in itself, already in collapse, not believing in the possibility of a critical reason, but taking it as a reason that is always “[…] at the service of an immemorial cunning, of an immemorial project of domination of nature and over men […]” (^{Rouanet, 1987}, p. 12), that is, taking it for its repressive side. This view is corroborated by ^{Adorno’s (2020)} criticism of reason. For him, the dimensions of repression and progress are effects of the same reason, so that barbarism and emancipation constitute two sides of the same coin. Inherently in subjective reason is a movement of self-destruction, as the more it progresses in its operation, the more humanity becomes trapped in a quagmire of reification. All situations, including those involving humans, become targets of rational scrutiny and objectifying control. The more intense the rationalization of society, the more intensified the institutions of power become. In line with this thought, science and technique are the main factors of social repression (^{Adorno, 2020}).

Thus, the characteristic of ambivalence of reason and science by Frankfurtians, in this case, by Adorno and Horkheimer, is enunciated (^{Habermas, 2012a}). This is a critique of reason due to its aporetic character, since the reason that makes liberation and emancipation possible is the same reason that produces domination. With these two faces, a self-opposition, an aporia, is established in reason itself, which results in it acting against itself, which makes it powerless to achieve its critical project. The total criticism of reason, therefore, is equivalent to the total annulment of criticism (^{Rouanet, 1987}).

The identification of the ambivalent character of modern reason can be considered the great contribution of these Frankfurt philosophers, as well as the complaint that its instrumental dimension surpassed its emancipatory dimension within the scope of the modernity project. In other words, the complaint that the way reason operates on the objective world of existing things, from the perspective of knowing them and acting on them, has become the predominant way of using reason, giving rise to bureaucratization and the phenomenon of reification (objectification) of this world, with losses to the notion of civilization and the dignity of human life (^{Adorno, 2020}). Ultimately, it is a complaint that, oversized in its instrumental character, reason began to serve an objective purpose, becoming a tool of control, dominance, and productivity. Although Adorno and Horkheimer are not post-moderns, it can be said that they poured water on the mill of postmodernism, or, alternatively, that they helped produce a tsunami on whose waves postmodernism will ride.

Postmodernism configures a form of thought that is expressed by the most varied currents, making it impossible to present it sufficiently completely within the limits of this writing. For the purposes we set ourselves here, we will restrict ourselves to pointing out two characteristics of this form of thought that, in our view, mark a difference and a break with what we indicate as desirable to maintain in relation to the ideas of republican education. Remembering, we had suggested the current relevance of an education oriented towards forms “[…] enlightened subjects, capable of deliberating, each one for themselves, about the destinies of a society that concerns everyone”. The achievement of such a purpose, which aims to articulate individuals subject to a form of collective life, presupposes, as we indicated above, a common education based on knowledge that, in this case, would have to be rational, in the sense of being guided by some objectivity criterion.

Such an orientation present in the Enlightenment education project seeks to be a response to the human way of being in its challenge of establishing a common world. In this sense, it can be said that, since the beginnings of the philosophical tradition, the recognition of our erratic condition, given the absence of a natural script for the establishment of a collective existence, required the forging of some criteria that could guide this coexistence. with the others. And the search for such a criterion, always with some claim to universality, or potential to concern, can be taken as corresponding to the thematization of reason in the philosophical tradition. The modern education project, therefore, is guided by the intention of offering a criterion that allows establishing links and reciprocal complicities, and, thus, allows for sociability no longer based on the principle of subjugation to the strongest, for example.

The two characteristics that we are going to point out in relation to postmodern thinking go against the grain of what we ended up highlighting in the configuration of the educational project of modernity, in this case, Enlightenment-inspired republican education. The first characteristic is the denial that there may be any criteria for criticism, with which “critical thinking” loses any and all meaning (^{Silva, 1993}, p. 122). In this sense, it is a “post-critical” theory that, with the refusal of reason, renounces any claim to universality in its statements and, consequently, the claim to concern, to establish reciprocal complicities for life in a world common human. And the second characteristic of this postmodern thinking that we want to highlight is linked to the previous one, as we are left with: there are only narratives. And fatally partial narratives (^{Silva, 1993}, p. 127-128). In other words, each person chooses their story to tell, no longer to establish a debate, or an argument with a view to producing a more consistent understanding, but only to establish a position or gain supporters. Thus, there are no facts, just versions that seek to impose themselves. Consequently, science no longer moves according to some truth or effectiveness, nor is the judicial system guided by some principle of justice. Everything is just a game to establish power over each other. And there is nothing that can be done, because appearance configures reality itself. According to ^{Silva (1993, p. 127)},

From a postmodern point of view, there is no reality beyond and outside language and the signs from which language is formed. Language and signs do not represent a reality outside them, nor are they in correspondence with a reality that exists beyond them. They are, rather, constitutive of reality.

In a context that appears like this, how can we still talk about education? And more than that: what would we base a training project on if everything, in principle, has more or less the same value, if there are no criteria for choosing one thing over another? A curriculum, for example, would be nothing more than a war of narratives, which would change at the whim of political forces and according to the face of those who have, circumstantially, the prerogative to issue decrees or make decisions. In what way, finally, could an education project in such a context contribute to a gain in civility, or be an expression of an ethical commitment towards the new generations coming into the world, since, under these assumptions, ethics itself leaves from having any universal appeal, becoming a mere expression of the preferences of this or that group?

From the Loss of Objectivity References to the Death of Truth

What we highlight from postmodern thinking are two characteristics whose practical effect is the loss of objectivity references, which obviously results in enormous difficulties for the educational task. How would it be possible to educate, or even establish a training curriculum within the scope of a public policy, without having a minimally shared understanding of what can be taken as truth⁵, as correct, as appropriate? The establishment of objectivity references, in the form of rationality paradigms, for example, can be taken as one of the purposes of philosophy since forever. These are thematizations of this order that allow us to speak of a world that goes beyond a particular perception of things. In education, in a special way, it is necessary to know how the world we tell the new generations corresponds to our world and that it is common to all of us. Certainly, what a teacher is expected to teach cannot be content that results from his free creation, but rather that corresponds to that which refers to a ‘us’, to the human collective of a nation, or to the inheritance of a historically established experience.

Taking the reflection regarding the crisis of reason and, in its wake, the perspective of abandoning reason and critical thinking⁶ itself, and taking, on the other hand, what we suggest as important and desirable to maintain from the Enlightenment project of society and education, as analyze the present time in which opinions are formed based on the flow of information and manifestations that occur within the scope of new digital media? What assumptions underpin this communicative flow, more or less explicitly, more or less covertly? In the analysis that follows, we will seek to identify in the postmodern positions, highlighted here, a potentiation of the problematic situations that the flow of networks has been presenting, especially with regard to the way in which opinions are formed and their impacts on the constitution of a collective life, especially in its political configuration.

The problematic situation that arises in the wake of these perspectives of postmodern thought is the following: objective truth loses importance; the references are all relativized; meanings are seen as entirely subjective; and science, as an effort to understand the objective world, no longer seems to have as much relevance. This way of thinking provides the basis for the emergence of denialism, such as anti-vaccine movements, flat-earth conceptions and revisionisms of history. It is not the case that postmodernism translates into denialism, but, as ^{Kakutani (2018, p. 64)} understands, “[…] postmodern arguments would pave the way for supporters of the anti-vaccine movement and global warming deniers, who refuse to accept the consensus opinion of the overwhelming majority of scientists.”

This climate of deconstruction of reality, of crumbling scientific references and truths, brings the possibility of modifying what is thought to be the truth, as well as the ways in which it is passed from generation to generation. This deconstruction brought an extreme instability of meanings, in which “[…] anything could mean anything”, fostering an intellectual panorama in which “[…] no fact, no event and no aspect of history has any fixed meaning or content” , as well as “[…] there is no definitive historical reality” (Lipstadt⁷ apud ^{Kakutani, 2018}, p. 65).

It is worth remembering recent orders from the US government to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to avoid using the expressions “scientific basis” and “fact-based”, just as in the Orwellian dystopia 1984 there was no word in the new language vocabulary for “science” (^{Kakutani, 2018}, p. 42). In this dystopian reality, so similar in some dimensions to our current context or to Nazism, in which there was no word for “philosophy”, the Party and Big Brother control reality, appropriating language and modifying the past according to their World vision. In the case of Orwellian dystopia, “[…] History was a palimpsest scraped to zero and reinscribed with the exact frequency of necessity” (^{Orwell, 2021}, p. 49).

To illustrate the consequence of the total relativization of truth, let us think about a context in which no one knows what to believe anymore and, therefore, can believe anything, as ^{Hannah Arendt (2012)} said in her reading about advertisements. totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. This is what also happens in the current reality in which new digital media operate, in which fake news is disseminated at a speed never seen before and segregationist movements disseminate hateful messages freely, taking advantage of this obscure scenario in which there is no objective truth that can serve as a criterion for criticism. In both situations, these are realities in which the relativization of truth becomes an instrument of control in a mass society.

Based on what we have indicated about the scope in which the new digital social media operate, we can already highlight a context of systematically disturbed, asymmetric and manipulative communication, to use Marques’ terms (1993). What some thinkers imagined about cyberculture, as a space for diversity and broad dialogue within a new perspective of universality, did not materialize exactly in this way. For ^{Charlot (2020, p. 124)}, cyberspace “[…] cannot be the place of cyberculture of freedom, equality, creativity, encounter with others and their differences, dreamed of by Lévy⁸ and other authors”, because, being a space without pedagogy, is the space that, according to Charlot, is characterized as a space without regulation between desire and norm. This space is currently “[…] a lawless space, sometimes for good, often for evil” (^{Charlot, 2020}, p. 124). Still according to the author’s diagnosis, Lévy’s “beautiful formula” (^{Charlot, 2020}, p. 113) is “imminently questionable” (^{Charlot, 2020}, p. 125), because there is a “[…] project built in total ignorance of the anthropological issue of desire and the norm” (^{Charlot, 2020}, p. 117), opening space for the free circulation of the desire for the self and immediacy.

Even though we know that cyberspace is not a homogeneous territory, and that it also allows interactions based on cooperation and in a democratizing sense, we do not see how it could point to a new and improved humanity, in the context of social networks and instant communicators. What is observed is a scenario of greater concentration of people who think alike, gathered in bubbles, which even increases political polarization, increasingly weakening the democratic means of dialogue. ^{Charlot’s critique (2020, p. 116)}, for whom cyberspace is “[…] a place that, by nature, tends to close communities of tastes and opinions into their ‘private little world’, quickly hostile to what is another”, fits well with this space of bubbles that form based on the continuous flow of information without regulation and curation. It can be added, according to the author, that in this space the subject is abandoned only to the norms of codes, algorithms and neoliberalism. Therefore, with regard to networks and digital social media as a space for communication, cyberspace operates without “any norm of horizontal self-regulation” (^{Charlot, 2020}, p. 124). In this context, without pedagogy, the doors are opened to hatred, holy wars, financial extortion and political fraud.

Social networks end up contributing greatly to the intensification of this phenomenon. According to ^{Kakutani (2018, p. 16-17)}, they “[…] connect like-minded users and supply them with personalized news that reinforces their preconceived ideas, allowing them to live in bubbles […] without communication with the outside world”. Groups, communities or bubbles, which reinforce only limited convictions, end up making it impossible for these people and others to understand the shared reality.

About the notion of truth, several studies show the difficulties arising from fake news. Without knowing what is true or false, people can no longer understand the reality they experience. In The Death of Truth, ^{Kakutani (2018)} examines this problem and how it can harm democracies as well as other means. For the author,

The term ‘decline of truth’ […] entered the lexicon of the post-truth era, which also includes now common expressions such as ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’. And not only is the news fake: there is also fake science (produced by climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers, the anti-vaccine activists), fake history (promoted by Holocaust revisionists and white supremacists), fake profiles of Americans on Facebook (created by Russian trolls) and fake followers and ‘likes’ on social media (generated by bots)

(^{Kakutani, 2018}, p. 11).

Attacks on the truth mean that people no longer know how to differentiate the true from the false and, among populisms, nationalisms, denialism and fundamentalism, “[…] they resort more to fear and anger than to sensible debate, corroding institutions democratic and exchanging experts for the wisdom of crowds” (^{Kakutani, 2018}, p. 12). This creates a picture close to that described by ^{Arendt (2012, p. 519-520)} in her work The Origins of Totalitarianism:

In an incomprehensible and perpetually changing world, the masses had reached a point where, at the same time, they believed in everything and nothing, they believed that everything was possible and that nothing was true [...]. The totalitarian leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, it was possible to make people believe the most fantastic statements on a given day, with the certainty that if they received irrefutable proof of their untruth the next day, they would appeal to cynicism […].

Fake news, therefore, do not just consist of false news, but in the creation of an illusion that ends up being put in place of what is real. And when we no longer know what is real and what is fake, people can decide to choose to believe anything, or nothing. Both possibilities seem quite terrifying if we take into account that democratic republics are governed by people’s most general opinions.

How could we combat all this perverse side of cyberspace and new digital media? The problem is that this space, by nature, is intended to be a space for transversal communications, completely open in relation to norms and content, in which “any norm is considered as censorship” (^{Charlot, 2020}, p. 118). And for this it no longer matters that the content is the most racist, sexist and extremist possible, as long as the people who produce it find others who also think the same way.

This is a favorable scenario for the emergence of new forms of fascism, or, at the very least, for hindering the cohesion of the social bond and the public sphere. Society projects that are not democratic end up benefiting from this scenario, in which the other cannot be accepted and consensus is nothing more than a way of thinking according to the sensationalist messages of propaganda quickly spread by new digital technologies. Regarding propagandist language, ^{Kakutani (2018, p. 97)} states that “[…] politicians have always distorted reality, but TV – and later the internet – gave them new platforms to prevaricate”.

Reflecting on the fact that thought is directly related to language, and that the authoritarian/fascist ideology of the past always intended to appropriate language as a way of mastering the truth, we can alert to this context in which we no longer understand reality. experienced due to an impoverishment of language. “Postmodernism not only rejected all metanarratives, it also emphasized the instability of language” (^{Kakutani, 2018}, p. 65). This is evident in cyberspace, where it is increasingly impoverished, conveyed by memes, videos, gifs and stickers, in which there is a previously given, limited meaning. These are propagated via applications and platforms that do not require more than a few seconds of concentration from users, who are increasingly conditioned to these ways of reading and receiving signals.

It does not seem that we have a space for the expansion of democracy, given the hate speeches and authoritarian political projects that are gaining strength in this environment, whether through short and “well” edited videos, or through WhatsApp mass forward messages. The “flood of lies” today emitted and promoted through cyberspace and social networks disorient people. By disorienting, bringing discord and hatred, they prepare the ideal conditions for mass society to adhere to party slogans and propagandistic clichés. For ^{Kakutani (2018, p. 111)}, “[…] this was why authoritarian regimes throughout history appropriated everyday language in an attempt to control not only the way people communicate, but also how they think”.

By misappropriating language and rewriting history little by little with fake news, the ideal linguistic conditions for democracy are replaced and an environment favorable to autocracy is established. In this context, only the cliché, the slogan, the ready-made phrase, said with greater conviction, regardless of the content, works. In this context, the name of ^{Kakutani’s (2018)} book seems to make more sense: “The death of truth”.

A Concept of Rationality anchored in Linguistic Intersubjectivity

Even taking seriously the blunt criticisms made of modern reason by eminent Frankfurt thinkers, especially regarding the instrumental character that has become hegemonic in it, there would be a way to resume a discourse of reason to face the problems described above, enhanced by the schemes provided by postmodernity and based exactly on the disbelief of reason? And on the other hand, such a resumption would allow the recovery of notions dear to the modern political and educational project, such as the clarification of subjects based on referential parameters with claims of universality, that is, through criteria with potential for aggregation with a view to building a common sociability, based on respect, solidarity and ethics? Well, our intention is to respond positively to these two questions based on a brief outline of the philosophical perspective established by Jürgen Habermas.

In general terms, the German theorist, in his Theory of Communicative Action (^{Habermas, 2012a}; 2012b), recognizes the missteps of modern reason and the tragic effects produced in its name, but understands that there is a potential for rationality that can be recovered in contexts of the lived world, and which is expressed in the very form of communicative language, more specifically, based on the pragmatic assumptions that guide it. This is, obviously, a paradigmatic change regarding the way in which the notion of rationality is established and which, in general terms, consists of the transition from subjectivity to intersubjectivity. Rationality, therefore, will no longer be the expression of a self-referential thought, supported by the logic of thought itself, but the expression of an agreement established within the scope of communication oriented towards understanding. Therefore, the notion of rationality no longer refers to certain supposedly rational contents, but rather to the communicative process through which certain contents come to be agreed (^{Rouanet, 1987}, p. 13-14).

Thus indicated, the rational attitude operates with a view to mutual enlightenment, at the same time that it is oriented towards sociability based on the principles of truth, justice and solidarity. And by recovering the utopian forces present in the project of modernity, the Habermasian perspective was coined, by ^{Paulo Sérgio Rouanet (1987, p. 26)}, neo-modernity, configuring a new paradigm in which reason is based on the pragmatic language of the world of life, starting to express itself as linguistic intersubjectivity.

Assessing the reach of this new paradigm, ^{Mario Osorio Marques (1993, p. 74)} states that “[…] the change from the ontological paradigm of reason anchored in the objective order of the world to the medium paradigm of reason”. Therefore, it would only be after the so-called linguistic turn that knowledge and reason began to be conceived from the “universal medium of language” (^{Marques, 1993}, p. 71). In the two previous paradigms, there is a linear relationship between subject and object that will only be overcome by the communicative paradigm, in which reason manifests itself “in the multiplicity of its voices” (^{Marques, 1993}, p. 71). In this way, it is no longer just the subject that relates to the object, or to an objective reality, but the subjects. There is also no subject that produces objectivity in subjective reason, nor that discovers the already established objective truth, but we have language that creates and embodies the reality of knowledge (^{Marques, 1993}), establishing the objectivity of the world.

It is interesting in this paradigmatic reformulation to realize that knowledge is no longer a mirroring of the reality and nature of the world, but an assertion about them before a linguistic community. The act of knowing starts to be conceived within a space of logical, explainable and justifiable reason: knowing is “locating oneself in the logical space of reasons” (^{Marques, 1993}, p. 75). Thus, thinking is no longer independent of language, but interconnected and dependent on it in its own constitution.

Directly linked to this is an understanding of language as a socially constructed “object” and a concrete practice of this society, reflecting the structures of social interactions. Here the use of language consists of an action, an act of mutual understanding, in search of agreements based on interrogation and justification. The logical space of reasons is that community or society in which something is intended as an expression of truth. And, if knowing is making assertions before a community about reality, these assertions will be valid only when the rules according to which the assertion is made are presented to the community; or when the rules of the language games of which the assertion is part are presented, so that other subjects can interact, understanding what is intended as truth, being able to question, disagree and agree rationally. In other words, there are specific conditions for something to be considered rational, “[…] what Habermas calls an ideal speech situation” (^{Marques, 1993}, p. 78). For ^{Marques (1993, p. 78)}:

Having as a necessary practical standard the ideal speech situation, that is, the anticipation and presupposition of an interlocution that is neither coercive nor distorted by external or internal factors, but guided by the principles of reciprocity and symmetry, so that all participants have the same possibilities to intervene, ask and respond, to problematize, interpret, give opinions, justify, decide, order, assent or oppose.

Within this paradigm, those claims or assertions that can be seen and understood as justifiable by a free and rational argumentative process between subjects who relate linguistically in the specific situation are considered rational and, therefore, Habermasian thinking brings certain methodological advantages. In language, ways of thinking, structures and the rationality that may be expressed are evident, which does not occur in the paradigm of subjective reason. While in the paradigm of subjective reason rationality is introspective, in language reason is made public, as it occurs in “verbal externalizations” (^{Habermas, 2012a}, p. 31).

Regarding assertions, ^{Habermas (2012a, p. 34)} states that “[…] the better one can substantiate the claim of efficiency or propositional truth associated with them, the more rational they will be”. In this conception, rationality is attributed to a communicative externalization according to its “[…] willingness to suffer criticism and its ability to justify itself” (^{Habermas, 2012a}, p. 34). Thus, due to the externalization and publicity factor of the language, there may be criteria for validating the rationale. And, because there are criteria and conditions for something to be rational, the possibility of criticizing what is intended to be true does not disappear. This is the most important point in this paradigmatic positioning.

And it is exactly in such an ethereal reality, like the one described above, in which everything seems to be relativized, that it is necessary to establish the minimum conditions of intersubjective understanding about the lived and shared world. It is especially here that criticism needs to be constantly present, so that solid anchor points can be established in the argumentative linguistic community. This is what reinforces ^{Marques (1993, p. 97)} when referring to situations of disturbed communication.

In the factual context of a systematically disturbed, asymmetrical and manipulative communication, in which the very use of language appears distorted and misleading, it is necessary for critical reasons to operate in order to establish the assumptions of ideal communicative action, implicit in the very disposition of participate in the process of cooperative search for knowledge, in order to produce a consensus based on the criterion of universalization, that is, on the reciprocity of equal recognition of claims to truth, rectitude and sincerity [...].

Therefore, it is proposed a way of thinking about the question of truth, or the old problem of knowledge, anchored in the communicative paradigm, in a neomodern perspective. The possible response to this troubled context of deconstruction of truth and basic references about the lived world is, in our opinion, in this paradigmatic turn towards intersubjectivity in which linguistic signs replace subject-object relations, without losing the character of objectivity of truth. We propose this as an alternative to what the postmodern model of thought offers, under the aspects highlighted above, which enhances the relativization of truth as a way of confronting its absolutization, reinforcing this problematic context. Therefore, we also do not see how this model can address the basic issues relating to democratic and republican forms of society, given the extreme contingency in which everything is relative, with the danger that “[…] the perception of accentuated social complexity becomes the experience that we are surrendered to contingencies, for the overcoming of which there is no longer a reference […]” (^{Habermas, 1990}, p. 178).

It is in this paradigmatic perspective that neo-modernity emerges, in a climate of reconstruction of modernity and tradition, in opposition to pessimism in relation to the possibilities of emancipation and in operating critically in relation to the pathologies of the contemporary world through reason. From this neomodern vision, Enlightenment principles and ideals are not denied (^{Marques, 1993}), as it is insisted on continuing to raise the flags of autonomy, secularism, universality, as well as insisting on the republican and democratic political project.

In contrast to the tendencies of thinking that promote the disappearance of the notion of criticism and the refusal of reason, a reconstruction of a project is proposed that should not be seen as ready or finished. The criticisms made to the Enlightenment project, which are largely fair and well-founded, should not represent the abandonment of certain emancipatory elements, but the continued commitment to them, based on a reason aware of their possible irrationalism. It is not these modern emancipatory elements that led to the catastrophes of the 20th century, nor is science the germ of scientism. These, indeed, were deviations from the modern project, or even excesses, which led it into the field of irrationalism, the reification of the world and barbarism.

Todorov (2008, p. 29), when analyzing the Enlightenment, states that we need “[…] first of all, a refounding of the Enlightenment […]”. It speaks, in this sense, of “[…] preserving the heritage of the past, but subjecting it to a critical examination, lucidly confronting it with its desirable and undesirable consequences”. It seems reasonable today to rethink the potential of the modern project and the power of science and to think about education in this way as well, since we have not given up on projecting a model of society based on freedom and democracy for new generations. We know that in a democratic republic, not only is the idea that everyone can have their voice, or a vote, valid, but also the idea of hope that we continue to live in a democracy (^{Avritzer, 2019}), in continuity, without rupture.

It is important to point out that the intensification of technology, as a result of scientific advances, can play an ambivalent role. In this sense, we must avoid the blind belief that mere immersion in cyberspace means, in itself, that we choose and decide our future, or that we are moving inexorably towards progress. What future and what progress? That’s what is important to be asked.

Educating under the Paradigm of Linguistic Intersubjectivity

Taking into account the modern ideals and commitments of educating for a republican and democratic society, and insisting on the idea that we can live collectively, it is also necessary to pay attention to new and current problems. In a way, it is essential that we do not fall into the blind bets and excesses of scientism as has already happened, however, attention must be focused on new subsystems of instrumental reason, such as networks, the algorithms that control them and cyberspace as a whole. To a large extent, the effort to educate from a neomodern perspective is to always return to the problem of knowledge, to constantly return to the democratic republican project and an emancipatory education, but always in a critical way, attentive to the new obstacles that arise to the school and its action towards the construction of a common world.

The paradigm of communicative reason suggests greater possibilities for dealing with topics such as education, politics, the crumbling of the social fabric, the emptying of the public sphere and the new forms of fascism that have emerged around the world. Because communicative and intersubjective reason is not established in a linear relationship between subject and object, without losing sight of the character of objectivity, it is possible to escape metaphysical dangers – political discourses based on metaphysical entities and absolute truths – without falling in total relativization – which opens space for denialism, whether of science or of the historical past itself. Even both extremes benefit fascist-inspired political projects.

Thinking about the possible role of the republican school in confronting all the distortions in the Lights project regarding to democracy and the republic itself, it is started from the assumption that it is possible, based on critical and communicative reason, to establish common points, to seek consensus, even if provisional. Thus, the school, under the inspiration of the Enlightenment project and in a neomodern perspective, can offer resistance both to scientism, which believes in science as a framework of immutable and absolute truths, and to denialism, which is based on a relativist view of the world of life and which prevents any type of consensus, also extending to issues of morality and politics; in short, offer resistance to everything that may be against a republican and democratic society today.

By structuring the teaching and learning processes under the assumptions of a discursive community of argumentation, the school can confront disturbed, distorted and manipulative forms of communication, thus training its students to be critical in relation to the scenario they may encounter. in the public sphere. Thus, once again, an Enlightenment ideal of betting on the potential of public schools and their possible social effects for a democratic, free and rational coexistence is maintained.

From this perspective, learning processes also imply the explanation of the way in which science is produced, that is, the establishment of a relationship with its form of validation. If a scientific theory needs to pass through the scrutiny of other scientists, that is, a community of knowledge in order for it to be accepted as true, the assertions we make about the world are as rational as we can communicate them, explain the rules by which that it was said, be understood, criticized, interrogated and, possibly, accepted. The result is that the world can be understood in its objectivity through language – which allows itself to be known, which is an extremely fruitful process for thinking about science itself. In this idea of putting everything to the “test” – to remember Karl Popper and the role of the falsification test – rationality is attributed to a communicative externalization in accordance with its “[…] willingness to suffer criticism and its ability to base itself” (^{Habermas, 2012a}, p. 34), and not by verifying its similarity with the supposed true reality.

Anchored in the paradigm of communicative reason, education can offer support for democracy to the extent that it reinforces that knowledge, that is, assertions – and here we draw a parallel with the public sphere – are nothing more than claims to truth that they are based on free, rational and intersubjective linguistic relations. It is a bet on an education that tries to launch a project of collective life, of a common world, respecting all existing diversity, and in which the ideals of equality and respect for individualities survive, coexisting with notions of universality.

The resumption and constant commitment to republican education in light of the modern project appears as a process in which the tools are offered so that the political system can be constantly criticized, thus always open to the new, free and democratic. Therefore, from a neomodern perspective, returning to the Enlightenment project makes it possible to reinforce democratic notions in the republic, respecting institutions, but always being able to review what has already been established. It allows respect for traditions and the possibility of criticism and innovation, when done in a democratic way. And this recovery, according to what we think, necessarily involves public schools due to their important role within this project.

Final Considerations

Thinking from the perspective of knowledge paradigms makes us realize potentialities and insufficiencies in the ways of conceiving knowledge, as well as its implications for the human world, especially with regard to education. In this way, we understand that, just like the essentialist paradigm, to which we opposed a no longer metaphysical perspective, the modern paradigm is also in crisis at its very core. Therefore, we believe it is necessary to think about this crisis, as it does not necessarily highlight an exhausted or self-contained project, but it allows us to think about a way of reconstructing it, maintaining some of its principles with the potential to produce a common human world.

As aimed to show, some of the perspectives that arise from postmodern thinking, due to what they mean in terms of denying objectivity references, certainly hinder more than they contribute to the articulation of a collective life. On the contrary, while modernity insisted on a bet so that we could live together – democratic republics –, these post-modernisms will even place this dimension of life in the sea of relativization. Therefore, in order to be able to think about the problems highlighted, it was concluded that it is reasonable to anchor in the post-metaphysical paradigm of communication.

^{Recalling Rouanet (1987, p. 325)}, “[…] if culture can occasionally bend to power, succumbing to old genetic affinities with barbarism, power feels more at home where there is no culture”. Therefore, it is not because of uncertainties that we should not seek references. If we can no longer trust the metaphysical entity called truth, we must seek to find it through free, rational and intersubjective communication, and not reduce truth to the status of a lie, to the point where we no longer know what to believe in.

Neoliberalism implies exponential individualization, according to which the only thing we share is a need for competition, for satisfying our own desires and impulses. This scenario, accentuated by the way in which new digital media operate in cyberspace, promotes an emptying of meaning in the public sphere, in public affairs, making ethical, political and educational commitments to changing the world and tradition increasingly difficult.

Educating under the paradigm of linguistic intersubjectivity, as proposed here, implies a possible resolution, always partial and never finished, of the problem of human sociability. This assumes a position regarding the republican dimension of the school and, with this, the defense of democracy. And it will be in this way that we can position ourselves against new forms of fascism and protect new generations from discourses that try to assert themselves as truths, but that escape the linguistic game of validation, or that lean towards total relativization.